


First Time Again

by kaixo (ballpoint)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 08:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9713837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballpoint/pseuds/kaixo
Summary: Eric realises his feelings for Dele when Dele makes a throwaway comment re: spending valentine's day with his girl friend





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt for valentines' day. You know who you are! Enjoy!

“ _Pob asshole yn english ddyn_ ,” Ben declared as he shucked off his shoes. 

“What’s that about?” Dele frowned, kicking off his training bottoms. “It’s bad, it sounds bad.”

Winksy wrinkled his nose, his eyes slitted with amusement, towel slung around his bare freckled shoulders. “It is. Someone’s getting ready for Six Nations, eh, Ben?”

“We’re going to be playing Liverpool then,” Ben shook his head, “a terrible thing, that.”

“What are you talking about?” Eric tugged off his training top, stomped his feet just to keep _moving_ because _Deus_ , if it wasn’t half cold out there today. Even with Poch’s runs and shape work, and their bright spirits in training a contrast to the weather, it didn’t make one immune to the cold. 

The heating and steam from the showers thickened the air with its vapour to the point where it formed a haze similar to fog which rolled across the room, hiding everyone behind a veil of mist in varying stages of bath and undress. 

If it had been in the warmer months, the humidity might have bothered Eric, but now in the eye of the deep English winter (February worse than January, if you believed it), steam and heat warmed him to the bone, goosebumps and chill thawed away. 

“Rugby,” Dele explained with a good-humoured roll of his eyes, his mouth a pout of amusement, damp towel in hand. “Ben and Winksy have been giving each other verbals all week.”

Oh, yeah. 

Ben being Welsh, had grown up in a country where Rugby was the national sport and football an aside. Winksy had been a keen Rugby player in school, his love of the game constant even now. Their shared love of the game, coupled with England and Wales’ historical rivalry made for some heated debates between them, be it on the coach or plane. 

“Ben here thinks that Wales have a chance,” Winksy explained, “so we’re having a wager. Not money, mind, that England will win.”

“Like you lot did at the Euros?”

“Ouch,” Dele’s smile turned to flint, as he started to roll the ends of his towel with both hands. Eric had to admire how deft Dele’s movements were, the towel moving from the floppiness of cloth to something looking like the tensile strength of a whip. 

He caught Eric’s eye, raised his eyebrows and Eric could almost hear the taunt. _Should I, Dier? Come on, tell me no._

Eric made to rub his shoulder, his fingers tracing the curve of it, before bringing them to his palm and giving Dele a wink and a thumbs up. 

“It happens,” Winksy rolled his shoulders. “Football is football, and Rugby is Rugby. But England’s been doing well, and under Eddie Jones - we’ll be fine.”

“You’ll waffle, like you alway- HEY!”

The end of the towel snapped against Ben’s damp skin, the sound as loud as firecracker. The effect on Ben’s skin immediate; an angry starburst of red against the fairness of his shoulder.

For a few seconds, silence stole across the room, chatter stilled as everyone looked for the source of the noise. Clapping his hand on his shoulder, Ben spun around, eyes scanning for the culprit, Dele looking on, features carefully schooled to sinlessness. 

Dele could do innocent. 

Eric didn’t know how, what with Dele being alert and open to every prank, no matter how extreme. If one’s face reflected what dwelt in his heart, Dele’s face would have been painted with a jester’s cloth hat perched on top of his head, a bell at the end of each of the three points jingling at every movement. 

Towel around his neck, floppy now, he looked guiltless. Eyebrows raised, eyes wide and confused as a child in wonder. His mouth soft, relaxed. 

“ _Dele_ ,” Ben’s manner now indignant, “seriously?”

“Mate,” Dele blinked, his dark eyes free of guile and he even had a _tinge_ of hurt in his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ _Pob asshole yn english ddyn_ ,” Ben repeated, but with more heat now. It made no sense for him to ask the room if it had been Dele, because people were already resuming their conversations, even if they bit their lips from smiling. Ben stormed off towards the far end of the showers, and biting his lip, Winksy followed after giving both of them a wave and a wink. 

Finally, when they caught each other’s eye again, Eric couldn’t help it, clapping his hand over his mouth to stop the laughter from spilling out. 

“You _cockwomble_ ,” Eric managed to warn Dele through gasps of laughter, feeling his face burn from holding his laughter in. “It’s not going to end here, you know that.”

“I know,” Dele grinned. “It’s going to be mad.”

Eric knew, as the sensible one in their partnership, he should have appealed to Dele’s better nature. Coax him to go and make nice with Ben, because it wasn’t his fault that their national team was so crap. But when Dele grinned at him like that, jaunty and triumphant, all protestations died on his tongue, because it really didn’t matter.

***

“Valentine’s Day, ehh? What are you all up to?” Sonny asked as everyone met in the canteen for a light lunch afterwards.

“It’s my birthday,” Christian replied in the thoughtful way he had about him. “And there’s Gent on Thursday,” he helped himself to steamed vegetables and chicken presented in the heated metal containers that displayed varied dishes, all of them more or less fitting to their specialised dietary requirements. “Nothing too crazy.”

“What about you, Dele?” Sonny asked as they sat down at the table together. Christian had broken off from their group, joining Jan, Dembele and Toby for lunch two tables over. 

They spoke fluent English, the lot of them, but sometimes, they slipped into Dutch and riffed on in-jokes that only they knew. Like, what the heck was _Mega Toby_ about anyway? Why did the name alone cause all of them to fall about laughing and Toby to bury his face in his hands and shake his head in embarrassment? 

“You heard Christian,” Dele indicated in Christian’s general direction with his thumb, as he stirred his soup with his other hand. Dele, Eric knew, wasn’t a fan of soup, but after training in the rain to the point where the cold felt as if it stole a march from your skin to the marrow of your bones, soup was the easiest way to warm up and get nutrients on top of everything. “Match on Thursday, mate.”

Sonny sipped from his water bottle, his nod sage as he said, “I’m sure your girlfriend has uh... ? Ideas? Ideas, I mean.”

Dele leaned back in his chair, put his fist against his mouth, eyes rolled skyward. Eric leant forward, elbow on the table, and resting his chin against his fist, looking at his friend. Dele the personification of _kinetic_ and lively. Clad in the sky and cobalt blue sports top they all wore, the laughter bubbling from him as Kyle passed by, flicking his ear, teasing him about the nominations for January player of the month. 

For someone of his talents, who just took the PL by storm, Dele was still... Dele. 

Relatively unaffected by the trappings of the exaggerated and well-remunerated world they found themselves in. Still played with the vim and hunger like the lad who rolled up to Spurs about eighteen months ago and somehow found himself in the changing room with the U21s instead of the main changing room with the rest of them when they reported to training. 

_“Where do you go to change?” Eric had asked Dele the second week after they broke for lunch. He hadn’t wanted to pry, honestly, but it seemed odd that Dele just showed up to training, got stuck in with the rest of them and then poof, he disappeared again. “Don’t you have a locker?”_

_“Yeah, I think so,” Dele indicated to the area where the U21s changed and practiced in the distance. “I’m good with over there.”_

_“I’m sure you are,” Eric agreed readily, “but you really should be with us. Let’s get it sorted, yeah?”_

_The look Dele sent him was one of amusement, “And suppose I like where I am?”_

_“You can go back there, if you wish. But give us a chance, eh?”_

__”Oh alright,” Dele sighed the sigh of the put upon, and even then, Eric knew he’d been joking_ _

Dele just _fit_ into the dynamics of the first team. As snug and comfortable as the socks they wore and just as invaluable. Dele, quick to smile and do the complicated handshakes that Sonny and himself challenged each other to do, a ‘dab off’ until someone fumbled their formations and both of them collapsed in laughter. 

Although the sky was the colour and texture of spoilt milk outside, inside the canteen the lights were bright and warm overhead. The nearest to a sunny day, anyway, bathing Dele in their glow, throwing shadows on his features, making them sharper than they usually were. Like the cut on his eyebrow, and - 

“- I dunno,” Dele finished. “Probably a meal in Camden, I guess. For all intents and purposes, it’s -” His voice gradually fading to the margins, as if someone slowly turned the volume down on a TV screen. Dele’s features now pin sharp and crystal clear, as if Eric's eyesight switched from standard definition to high definition. Images of Dele moving from pixelated and fuzzy to almost painful detail; the texture of his skin, the nick in his eyebrow, his profile. The smile he flashed at Sonny dimmed by fatigue because Pochettino had worked them hard today. His Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he sipped and swallowed his soup. 

The realisation came to him as easy as breathing, as familiar as Portuguese, because he had felt it before. Like everything else concerning Dele, it thrilled, puzzled and vexed, but it didn’t _feel_ wrong. Like Dele’s presence himself, the feeling welcome, as simple as joy. 

“Eric,” Dele’s voice now fading in, volume being turned up and accompanying in the picture, his fingers brushing along Eric’s forearm. “What do you think?” 

_“Sorry?”_

Dele rolled his eyes in mild exasperation. His fingers chilled as always, his thumb rubbing the skin along Eric’s wrist. 

“Someone’s away with the fairies,” Dele’s rebuke was mild, especially softened by the warm look he shot Eric, before tilting his head towards Sonny. “Sonny dared us to pronounce a word. Say it again.” 

“ _Eichhörnchen_.” 

“What?” 

“Yeah!” Dele gave Eric’s wrist a pulse of a squeeze before pulling his hand away, turning his attention to his flavoured yoghurt. Eric flexed his fingers, pulling them into a fist, already missing Dele’s touch. “That’s what I said.” 

***

“Don’t. You. Dare. Laugh.” Dele gritted out, his hands out in front of his chest, his fingers making little motions as if he were pressing against invisible piano keys.

Eric hid his smile behind his fist, his half swallowed laughter coming out in a hiccough. 

Somehow, someone had rigged Dele’s locker. A minute earlier, Dele’d unlocked it, and yanked the door open, while speaking to Eric. 

“Like I was th-”

Vicious, sticky slime launched out at him, smacking him square in the chest, coating him in green from face down. With his face like thunder and his clothes coated in green, Dele looked like an out of season Grinch who’d tried to steal Christmas but failed. 

“That’s - erm...” Eric gestured helplessly, hearing his breath hitch. If he could just keep waving and - 

Dele shot him a look, and that did it, dragged Eric’s composure over the edge, as he collapsed into peals of laughter. It just couldn’t be helped, Dele’s expression of high dudgeon, mixed with chagrin. It was hard to look haughty and hard done by with dignity covered in green liquid that dripped off him in heavy drops and splashed on the floor around him. 

“I’m sorry,” Eric started laughing, unable to stop. 

Even when he recognised the look in Dele’s eyes and held up his hands, index fingers forming the shape of a cross as if warding off a vampire. 

“Don’t you dare, _Dele_ ,” he tried to strip the laugh from his voice, but when Dele stumbled towards him, hands forward and locked in a mockery of a zombie walk, Eric lost it. Laughing when he started to back away, but Dele was too fast for him. 

“No, Dele-!” Eric shrieked, as Dele jumped him with a wet _smack_ of liquid and wet clothing. They fell to the ground, hands sliding against the slick floor, limbs tangling as they tried to get up. Eric knew what Dele was doing though, smearing his wet and slimy clothes all over him under the guise of clumsiness. An absolute _cockwomble_.

“That,” Eric said, pushing himself into a seating position, half helping Dele up, because the floor was a bloody health and safety hazard underfoot. “That slime was for _you_.”

“We’re friends,” Dele hugged him, the liquid squishing between their bodies, making Eric’s clothing sodden with slime. “We _share_.”

Eric swore, wiping at his cheek. Okay, so he might be wrapped in warm feelings re: Dele, but he could have really done without this. He looked at the floor in front of them. Immaculately clean save for the splatters of said green liquid, and the streaks showing their footprints and where they fell. 

“I guess, we should clean up.”

“There’s a mop and bucket in the hall,” Dele said agreeably, but by the expression on Dele’s face, Eric knew he wasn’t in the room. 

“Dele,” Eric warned, “let it go.”

Dele threw an arm around Eric’s shoulders, pressing their foreheads together. 

Unable to resist the simple charm of it, Eric sighed, annoyance dissolving like a sugar cube in hot tea. 

When Dele was like this, all quiet and at rest, and there was nothing save the even sounds of their breathing and the ticking of their watches, it was the best thing. The morning early enough before office staff came in, the building not yet filled with the vibrations of people. Just them, and it was enough. Even though they were seated on the floor of the locker room, looking like lumps that crawled out of a swamp - or the nearest thing London had to swamps- their clothes stiff and cold and clammy despite the heated dressing room. 

“But-” 

“ _Dele_.”

“Fine.”

***

“That’s not even -” Dele fumed at lunch, scandalised to see a six-second gif on the Tottenham Hotspur twitter account, showing when he’d gone to open his locker. SPLOOSH, the sticky liquid launched from its spring contraption all over his face and clothing.

Sonny and Kevin were taken by the prank, enough to play it again and again on their phones.

“Don’t let the gaffer see _that_ ,” Harry warned. 

What with matches on the trot, because they were still involved in three competitions, and having to weather through them despite the injuries to the first team. Pochettino was on the hunt for a trophy, any trophy, his needy ambition naked and plain to see on his face like his nose.

***

Valentine’s Day came around like any other day. Except this time it came after a loss - _bloody Liverpool_ \- and even though Eric could throw off losses as well as anyone else could, this one hung around his neck a little tighter, its weight on his back a little heavier. This loss, a dent after eleven games without losing, a dent in their title challenge and a wobble to their top four Champions League places. Three points snatched away, just like that.

Heavy enough for him not to get his head around Valentine’s day, and his girlfriend, bless her, understood. 

“It is fine,” M said, her tones clear and direct because she wasn’t one to be passive aggressive and he appreciated that - and her- a lot for her attitude. 

Football already dysfunctional and crazy as it was, their relationship not needing to be that too. 

“But I will not stay home,” M finished, flicking a shank of flaxen blonde hair behind the curve of her shoulder that glowed with iridescent body cream under the lights. “I bought this dress for tonight-” her hands waved as she presented herself in the dress, a snug confectionary of a thing with lace and grommets - and exposed lots of limb. 

In his experience, girls who lived in London never seemed to feel the cold. Even when they hailed from somewhere else, they just... acclimatised easily enough to show off fashions no matter the wind chill, because they didn’t want to carry a jacket on a bar crawl. 

M looked good in it, long and lean. “I do want to wear it,” she finished, her favourite purse to hand, its chained strap tucked away somewhere. 

“Call this a-” Eric’s mind went blank, as he searched for the American phrase, his eyes on the TV, remote in hand as he restarted the clips with key tactics regarding Gent. “A rain check?”

“Night, Eric,” she pressed her cheek against his, because they both knew he hated lipgloss. 

“Even _Tom Ford_?” she teased, and when Eric furrowed his brow in confusion, M shook her head, hair flowing with movement. Her eyes lit with mirth, and he guessed he’d find out whom Tom Ford was eventually. Probably from the same source as Mega Toby, whatever that was. “Never mind.”

***

The next morning, restless from the night before, Eric found himself in the carpark at Enfield training centre. Normally, he would have had Jan and GKN with him, their chatter comfortable and distracting at the same time.

GKN’s confidence had grown with his English and his increasing knowledge of the local geography, so he took matters in hand for getting around North London. Jan’s injury put him on a different time table with everyone else, so he made his own arrangements getting on site. 

Eric’d already walked his dogs that morning, letting them run around until they’d gone from hyper to sluggish with exertion. It made no sense to hang around home any later, because of the London traffic. 

Mid February and the mornings were finally becoming lighter. The sky going from deep night to pearl-touched by rose that streaked across the clouds, if you were lucky enough to get sun. 

Then eventually, around early afternoon, patches of blue sky. 

A rap on his passenger window, and Eric not surprised to see Dele there, because Dele... well. 

Dele seemed to be one of those people who knew if he were being talked about, or even thought about. He’d just _appear_ , as if beckoned by unsaid desire. To the point where Danny said to him one day after training,“ _Yuh gwine live long enough for them to sun yuh_ , you know?” 

“What?” Dele asked, half laughing at the turn of phrase. They’d both lived long enough in London to recognise it as Jamaican patois, because you weren’t far from that influence in Tottenham, but recognising it and knowing what it meant were two different things. 

“I don’t even know, mate,” Danny shrugged. “Me nan would always say that. So you know, it must be true.”

“Trouble,” Eric snarked, pressing the button on the driver’s side to let Dele in. Dele, who brought in the chill from outside, the air smelling different around him. 

“You look like an oversized caterpillar,” Eric pointed out helpfully because Dele _did_ in his puffer jacket. The olive green colour against Dele’s fawn coloured skin only helped the comparison. 

“You’re so mean to me,” Dele groused, pushing the hood off his head, but keeping the cap on in the car, as he closed the passenger door with a click. 

Eric liked his vehicle, as large as a tank, with its seats in high driving position, that made driving long distances comfortable. Now, stationary in the car park, it was a shelter against all the elements outside. From their vantage point, the buildings with their glass frontage gleaming in the mid-distance. If you looked at the eleven o'clock position, you saw the training fields in the distance behind the mesh fences. 

The warmth in the utility vehicle comfortable, the air inside smelling faintly of dog and soil. 

Dele shifted in his seat. He’d been in Eric’s ride long enough to know how things worked, like adjusting the passenger seat so he could be comfortable. Dele’s head against the seat, their gazes locked. 

“Did you ever find out for _sure_ if Ben pranked you? Or it could have been Walks?” Eric asked, just to hear him speak. 

“No, not yet, but I think... I’ll leave it for now, what with Poch and all...” 

Yeah, after their meltdown at Liverpool - _honestly_ \- Pochettino had been on the warpath. Obsessively looking at his own failings, and the players’ as an extension. They had no time to sit around laying traps for each other. 

“Good idea,” Eric agreed, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, “considering that Wales lost on the weekend... On top of everything.”

“Yeah.”

“So... How was your Valentine’s Day?”

“It was what it was,” Dele burrowed himself deeper into his coat, his smile small and self-mocking. “Hard to focus on anything if you’re thinking about the next match.”

Eric nodded, because _that_ , he understood. After a loss, you desperately wanted, no- needed- to get back to winning ways. Form was a tricky, delicate thing. Not losing had its own irresistible momentum, only to stumble and lurch into a loss which threw up a cross roads. On one path, the slap of loss stirred you into recalibrating your efforts and spurring you on. On the other path, it made you so demoralised that it was easier to stumble into another loss. Like, well... Leicester. Look at them, last year Champions of England, and this year, unable to catch a cold, much less a goal. 

“Stop thinking about Leicester.”

“How do you-?”

Dele raised a hand and with a finger, made a circle around the space between Eric's eyebrows. 

“You get that look -” he circled again. “Here.”

“We-”

“Then you’re going to go on about Chelsea-” Dele leaned forward, shrinking the space between them, close enough to for Eric see the difference between dark brown iris and inky pupil, “and put yourself in a bad enough mood, and someone will have to jolly you out of it.”

Defeated now, Eric shook his head. “I can’t stop thinking about Chelsea, and what we lost,” he admitted. “I want a trophy so badly I can taste it. It’s the only thing I can think about.”

 _Liar_ , his conscience shoved a psychic jab in his ribs. The pain and momentary shortness of breath it left behind as real as a sneaky elbow on the pitch. 

As if he hadn’t been thinking about Dele for the past two days and realising what _this_ was, that somehow, his heart grew two sizes bigger to accommodate these feelings for Dele, but that they didn’t impede on what he had with M. 

Because Eric knew, _knew_ , he wouldn’t be acting on these newly deepened feelings towards Dele, because he didn’t need to. 

“Effin’ Liverpool,” Dele shook his head, “they’re like the Robin Hood of this league, aren’t they? Robbing points from the top six and sharing them amongst the bottom half of the table.”

Eric laughed, his mood brightening at the joke. 

“I guess,” he glanced at the display screen, and then straightened in his seat. Realising that the car park started to fill up (where did the time go?), and the day was already hurrying along. “Hey, Del, it’s time.”

Dele whistled, moving from comfortable slouch into action, the muffled sound of his keys jingling in the pocket of his puffer coat. 

“Yeah, yeah.”

In the space of a minute, they were up and out of Eric’s ride, half walking, half jogging briskly towards their workplace. The sunshine bright and welcome, although the temperature was still frigid. Thinking about the task ahead, gearing himself up for training and shape work, and a talk with the defenders, he must have made a noise of exasperation, the gentle slap at the nape of his neck tumbling him out of his thoughts.  
“We’ll sort it,” Dele murmured, slipping an arm around Eric’s shoulders. “I’d say chin up, but you have no chin, so...”

“Oh, do fuck off . You’re one to talk about dodgy features, with those crazy cuts in your hair.”

“Oh,” Dele’s eyes widened in mock sympathy. “Is someone sore?”

“Someone will be, if someone nutmegs me in training.”

“Challenge accepted.”

“ _Dele_!” Eric tried for authoritative, but his tone came out half exasperated, half affectionate. Dele a weakness that Eric didn’t need, but realised that he wanted, so wanted. 

“Yes?” and that was Dele, doing mock innocence again. He really was quite good at it. 

“Give us a goal on Thursday, and I won’t mind.”

“Done,” Dele said and his grin dazzled Eric all over again, as if he’d seen it for the first time. 

FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> Context is for the weak, but points to note
> 
>   * The Six Nations Championship[a] is an annual international rugby union competition involving six European sides: England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. It is sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The current champions are England, having won the 2016 tournament. [Wales and England have a history in Rugby. The teams and respective Rugby associations can't stand each other](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Nations_Championship%20)
>   * Mega Toby refers to a Dutch TV series [that was shown in Beligium and some parts of Dutch speaking Europe for a few years beginning in 2009 ](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Toby%20)
>   * Liverpool's points are a joke, tbh. When it comes to Top Six teams, they are ready to go, and come loaded for bear. The bottom sides? They are like, 'Ehhh 
>   * Leicester won the PL last season, but their form this season (2016/2017) has been abysmal. Watch then win the Champions League though 
> 



End file.
